New information coming up (from the actual patent details on the first patent I posted):

I think this is definitely one of the two patents in question - it's for a touch soccer arcade game specifically. The patent in question ONLY covers soccer games (Edit - however in the ammendments, Sega has suggested that they can use it for any games requiring control over a single character and groups of characters simultaneously), so even though it can be perceived as vague, it's not as vague as just moving a character via touch.

I've got a little bit more coming in a moment once I get done trying to work through the translation of the actual details of the patent. I'm a bit rusty and I don't have google translate to rely on (its actual jpg images of the patent itself that I'm looking at in details), so if someone is a bit more comfortable with Japanese, I'll be happy to post them as well. Otherwise, it'll wait until I'm done glancing for the highlights.

Anyone else can find the patent though with the patent number I posted originally.

And I did find the origin date. The patent's original filing was back in 2004.